


The Ostringer's Bird

by bookstorequeer



Series: Gamehawking [4]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, M/M, Nightmares, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-22
Updated: 2012-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:57:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookstorequeer/pseuds/bookstorequeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all details in the distance and blurs and shadows up close.  He does better at a distance but Phil Coulson is his exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ostringer's Bird

**Author's Note:**

> _Ostringer._ (see _Austringer_ , _Astringer_ )  
> noun in Falconry:  
> A person who trains and flies short-winged hawks, as the goshawk.
> 
>  
> 
> Spoilers from the movie - I'm assuming you've seen it and will understand fairly vague references to particular scenes.

There's blood, noise and no time for fear in his dreams. They're a cacophony of lights and pain and remembering violence against him and by him. He doesn't like his dreams.

When he wakes he's screaming but Fury isn't listening. The colonel just pats him on the head and sends him back out with a "We're counting on you, Barton."

He starts shaking during the first mission they send him on once his bones knit. He tries not to think about the torture and the pain that haunts him but he can't help reacting to the cold, shattered joints aching in the Siberian snow and he nearly gets himself killed before successfully completing this objective.

Fury tells him that's not good enough and sends him back for training. They yell at him, push him, and the nightmares get worse but they won't stop hounding him until he's their perfect peregrine. So he narrows his focus, zones in until he's just the raptor they want him to be and not the man who's still scared.

He does what they tell him, shoots who they aim him at, watches what they want him to. It's all details in the distance and blurs and shadows up close. People come too close and he flinches, unable to see so nearby because he's trained himself out of it. He's a sniper who can't see beyond his scope and his orders.

They keep coming and he keeps backing up until there are endless corridors of dust and echoing footsteps that follow him until he climbs up high enough and quickly enough to lose them.

He stays away from them, tries to hide and heal in this limited downtime before Fury calls on him again, before the soldier, the raptor, consumes the weak man. He shakes apart when he dreams and knits himself together with bone and muscle memory in the early morning when he wakes.

It's different when the quiet man leaves him pillows and blankets that smell almost familiar. He keeps his bow handy and lets this man, who speaks in a confident calm with slow movements, see him. He builds a nest and surprises himself by bringing the man--Phil he learns in absent-minded whispers--there when he hears noises like leaving. He is surprisingly against the idea of going two days without seeing the agent.

He beds them down, curling close like a frightened nestling and dreaming better dreams than he's been able to remember lately. They play cards and this man, Phil, doesn't poke or prod him, offering stories instead.

His own voice surprises him after so long without talking but once Clint starts trading stories, he can't seem to stop himself. He leans into the shoulder offered and follows Phil back down to earth when the other man has to go. He likes that Phil doesn't mention it, only shifting over slightly so there's room for Clint in the room, at the table, on the couch.

They don't have to talk about any of it; Clint can't help a smug smile when he can see that Phil finally figures it out. They just fit together and Clint has always slept better when there's another body between him and the door. He does better at a distance but Phil Coulson is his exception.

 

  
He isn't as surprised as he wants to be when Fury throws him back into the thick of it. He just doesn't like that the base is crawling with agents. They're everywhere and he retreats to his high perch when Phil isn't nearby, discomfited because he doesn't like the way the hum of blue energy from some strange foreign box seeps into his bones.

But before he can ask his Phil what's so important that they have to study it rather than just tear it into pieces and scatter it, there's a hostile where before there was only a stage for science. Then there's pain. Like ice in his veins, making him sluggish and slow, unable to command his own limbs. He's screaming inside his head, more aware then he has been in days, as he watches the helicarrier catch fire and knows that Phil is on board. There's just nothing he can do.

He wakes with a headache, grateful that it was Nat he ran into rather than his Phil because a bullet might not have worked as well to revive his free will, as a roundhouse kick to the head.

When Nat tells him that Phil's gone he goes numb again. _Gone_. Weeks ago his Agent sat him down and, complete with diagrams and old newspaper headlines, explained about knowing the unchangeable future. Phil said that there was nothing to be done but Clint hadn't listened to that part, once he'd been convinced. There was no way he was going to sit back and let his... _His Phil_  die.

He doesn't want to believe it. He barely does even when Fury shows him the body, cleaned of blood and staring at nothing. He rubs his fingertips over the creases in the suit that Phil kept in his locker but never wore, and flinches at the red that his touch leaves behind. He isn't sure if it's his or someone else's but it won't scrub off his skin, later, in the empty rooms of Phil's agency apartment, no matter how hot Clint turned the water.

Fury tells him, after the fact, that the cremation urn is buried at 34.9°N, 106.7°W, where their base used to be and the tesseract sat. He stands over the exact coordinates, kicking at sand to watch it settle back into place until you can't tell it had ever been disturbed to bury a good man. He cries, then, in the desert where no one can see him and calls Nat to come get him because he’s shaking too hard to drive. She doesn't say a word when she picks him up and neither does he. The car’s in the parking garage beneath Phil's apartment three days later and Clint doesn't ask how.

A week later Nat comes around, shoves him into the shower and drags him outside. He picks apart the hot dog she buys him and barely blinks when they turn towards Stark Tower and away from the apartment that haunts him, like echoes of memories and blood soaked into the couch where they marathoned _Super Nanny_  and the bathroom where his Phil had once picked thirteen pieces of glass from his shoulder because he refused to explain to Fury how he'd gotten the injury. Clint had told his Agent the truth but saving a little boy from a fire wasn't anything he wanted written down in official S.H.I.E.L.D. documents.

Stark gives him free range of the tower to pick a room and everyone else gives him loaded looks as if they are waiting for him to break down. He knows that Nat has to have told them what Phil meant to him but doubts she's really explained anything when he barely understood how much of a rock, a lodestone Phil Coulson had been until the man was gone.

Clint takes the highest room with more skylight than ceiling because seeing that many stars almost feels like a night in the desert. He faithfully cares for the cactus Banner had given him for a housewarming present and wakes every morning with the taste of sand in his mouth. He dreams of ashes and dunes and is startled awake by a knock on his door when everyone else calls first before ascending the height.

“Clint.”

The inflection is familiar even if the voice is tired. He can’t bring himself to open the door, sure that he has to be dreaming, no matter what Phil had told him about always coming back.

He spends the day leaning against the smooth wood and listening to his Agent’s voice sifting through the cracks in his walls. His cheeks are wet but he’s angry again when he works up the energy to finally unlock the door.

“You bastard.”

He can’t help it, staring at the shapes of the man who had died and left him. He’s had enough of being alone; he thought his Phil understood that.

“I’m sorry, Clint.”

He sways, lightheaded from the fact that either Stark has taken to drugging the air vented into his room or this is really happening.

“You died and I wasn’t even there.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

He’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t let this happen, wouldn’t let anything touch his Phil but it had. He kills people for a living, has done since before he found Fury, but he’d failed. He hadn’t even killed the being responsible for tearing this man, this good man, from his life.

“I should have killed him,” he mumbles, his body trembling with how hard he hopes he isn’t dreaming.

"I don't want you to kill anyone for me,” Phil says and he can’t help but smile a little. He should have known that would be the response, despite what they both do for a living.

"But—"

"Loki has his part to play in all of this,” is the soft murmur in his ear and Clint closes his eyes to listen, “just as that old body did and just as you do. We can't change that."

His chest aches but his Agent is warm as Clint is gathered closer. His hands fist the fabric on Phil’s back, unable and unwilling to let go again.

“You look different,” he says, because those eyes are familiar and that smile but there are fewer wrinkles and the arms around his ribs are stronger than he’s used to.

“I do,” Phil agrees and Clint guesses that they might just be the same age now, physically. That makes him smile and he leans into the kiss bussed on his temple. “Come on,” is the murmur in his hair, “show me your new nest, Eyas.”

With the door locked between them and the world, Clint feels a little safer. It will be easier to keep his Agent with him when nothing can reach them. The next morning he wakes up, surprised when he doesn’t taste sand. He pinches himself until he’s not dreaming anymore and doesn’t let Phil into any room he hasn’t cleared first. They don’t leave the tower for another week and it’s two before Clint lets Phil further than the bathroom on his own.

Coulson doesn’t seem to mind, meeting Stark’s smirks easily and barely blinking when Natasha corners him to threaten him with violence if he skips town again. Banner just smiles and Steve blushes; Clint likes that the Captain hands over the softest blanket without protest when Phil falls asleep during their movie marathons.

They stay in the highest room because their nightmares are fewer up so high and they keep the cactus because it makes Phil smile and dig his fingers into the sand at its base.


End file.
